Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme
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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 26: Networks: From Topology to Dynamics IV (joint session of BP, DY, SOE)
DY 26.7: Talk
Thursday, March 25, 2010, 15:45–16:00, H44
What network analysis can tell us about car-scrap bonus: the linchpins of modern economy — •Florian Blöchl1, Fabian J. Theis1,2, and Eric O’N. Fisher3 — 1Institute for Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, Helmholtz Centre Munich — 2Department of Mathematics, TU Munich — 3California Polytechnic State University
An input-output matrix collects good flows between different economic sectors, structural units of the economy like Agriculture or Pharmaceuticals. This matrix can be viewed as a directed weighted network. We analyze input-output graphs for a wide set of countries collected by the OECD. These networks contain only 40 nodes, but are almost fully connected and have quite strong self-loops.
We apply two measures of node centrality, both relying on different properties of random walks on the graphs: random walk centrality and a new measure we called count-betweenness. The latter is similar to Newman’s random walk betweenness, but allows for directed graphs and incorporates self-loops. Both measures give similar and reasonable results. For instance, we find that in Luxembourg the most central sector is Finance and Insurance, in Brazil Food Products, and in Germany Motor Vehicles. Thus, car-scrap bonus really aimed at the linchpin of Germany’s economy.
The sectors’ rankings are quite different, however some sectors are important in most countries while others are never. We therefore additionally structure the data by hierarchically clustering countries. Thereby we achieve clusters that well coincide with geographical proximity or developmental status.